Winnebago County overdoses rising but upset about them isn’t

ROCKFORD — Stacked bricks of cocaine and marijuana, bundles of cash, a cache of weapons neatly displayed on a table.

Chris Green

ROCKFORD — Stacked bricks of cocaine and marijuana, bundles of cash, a cache of weapons neatly displayed on a table.

The confiscation by police is often the result of a suspicious state trooper acting on instinct to search the vehicle of a nervous motorist. Or a lengthy drug investigation by multiple police agencies to take down a major supplier.

Such public displays are an overt message by police to drug traffickers to not do business in their jurisdiction.

They also have become few and far between.

A tell-tale sign that drugs are as prevalent as ever in Winnebago County lay in a statistic not found in the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Reports.

“Drug overdoses are increasing every year, and nothing is being done about it,” Coroner Sue Fiduccia says. “You guys write about it. It gets brought up at City Hall, but nothing is being done. The heroin is just nuts here.”

Winnebago County tallied 76 fatal drug overdoses in 2011 and 99 through Dec. 12, 2012.
Just as disturbing, Fiduccia says, is that for every fatal drug overdose are two or three nonfatal ones. Overdose survivors are often habitual abusers taxing crowded jails and drug-treatment centers and preying on the public by committing battery and theft to support their habits.

An overwhelming majority of the 2011 and 2012 overdoses were caused by illegal narcotics, but a breakdown on deaths by illegal or prescription drugs was not available.

What is certain? The drug abusers coming into Fiduccia’s morgue are from all walks of life: “It’s hitting all economic classes of people all over town.”

Winnebago County employee Jo Ferraro’s son had a $150-a-day drug habit.

David Mandell died from a heroin overdose two days before his 25th birthday.

An acquaintance he was “partying” with in the early hours of May 31, 2011, called 911 alerting authorities that Mandell seemed to not be breathing. The telephone line was left open to the dispatcher but the caller, to avoid arrest, fled without saying what room Mandell was in.

Ferraro said it took first responders time to find Mandell. She said she’ll never know if he could have been revived.

After his death, she met with her son’s acquaintance. “I said, ‘I don’t know whether to hate you or feel sorry for you’.”

It wasn’t long before that individual met his own premature end, Ferraro said. “They found him dead in an alley in Chicago.”

Mandell attended an in-house treatment center in Aurora for two months and enjoyed 13 months of sobriety before his overdose.

Not only is a relapse common, Fiduccia said, someone who has been sober for months or years of sobriety can overdose after one “hit.”

“When they use again, they go back to the same amount. It’s more than their body can handle.”

Ferraro said drug addicts don’t quit until they have hit rock bottom and want to become sober. Drug abuse is a “horrific disease” that’s not getting the attention it deserves.

“If people would only be more open about it. When I look in the paper and I see 19- and 20-year-olds who died, I know.”

Deputy sheriff: High crime rate a byproduct of drug use
In the past two years, the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department has seized more than $2 million in cash from drug raids. The agency ended two lengthy narcotics investigations — in conjunction with the FBI, ATF and Rockford police — in 2012 with the arrest of 13 people on state and federal drug charges.

Still, Deputy Chief Dominic Iasparro called last year’s number of deaths by overdose “significant for a county this size.”

“If you had 100 cases that were classified as murders or 100 cases that were classified as fatal accidents there would be public outcry,” he said. “You get 100 deaths by people using drugs, there is no outcry. But yet, examine the source of the drugs, the people who are selling those drugs, and the families of those people who are using the drugs, it’s a huge problem.”

Iasparro posits that the rising number of overdoses speaks to the heart of the city’s and county’s high crime rates.

“If you look at the overall crime problem, the biggest generator of statistics are property crimes: burglaries, thefts. ... The majority of those crimes are being committed by people who are using drugs. They are at the core of what we do on a daily basis in law enforcement.”

Iasparro also said the war on drugs cannot be won by law enforcement alone: People involved in drug prevention and treatment need to step up to the plate.

“There are kids going through the school system who are getting no drug education whatsoever. There are people on waiting lists to get in drug-treatment centers. That can’t be. Because while they are waiting, they are committing crimes.”